Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
Every evening this summer, from New Mexico to Montana, we've watched a blood-red sunset through a haze of woodsmoke. Since early June, the west has been on fire.
The National Interagency Fire Center reports that so far this year (and it's only mid-August), 7,037,373 acres or approx. 10,937 square miles have burned. All of the fires are on public land but many have spread to private holdings in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, Arizona, Washington, Oregon and California and destroyed property and cost lives. To put the size of the fires in perspective, that's larger than New Jersey and roughly the entire size of Massachusetts. Across the West right now, according to the United States Forest Service, there are 160 new fires, eight new large fires, thirty-six uncontained fires, and ONE area command team committed to fight them.
One.
This post is not a rant about fires and how all of them should be put out. There have always been fires. It's about how federal management (or, more truthfully, "mismanagement" or "lack of management") has created a situation that will result in more fires, more property destruction, and more loss of life.
Why? Because pine beetles have been allowed to kill 6 billion trees from New Mexico to British Columbia along the backbone of the Rocky Mountains. From the Canadian border to the Mexican border. Six. Billion. Trees. Imagine six billion dry matchsticks waiting for a spark.
In Wyoming, I've watched entire mountainsides turn from deep green to rust color in a few years. Not only is the forest itself a tinderbox, but because the trees are dead and not drinking water, that means a light rain that was once absorbed is now a flash-flood danger below.
The U.S. Forest Service has known about the problem since the 1990's. But rather than take action -- emergency spraying, culling, timbering, or ultra "multiple-use" methods of heading off the coming catastrophe -- there was typical bureaucratic inertia. For years. That's because the philosophy governing the federal agency has been "preservation" (resulting in fewer timber sales, closed roads, fewer grazing leases, buildup of fuel, etc.) -- as opposed to management of the resource. The lack of management has resulted in the loss of billions of board feet of lumber, healthy wildlife, the deprivation of livelihoods of thousands of people, and dying mountain communities -- at the very least.
I want to explode when I'm told I should recycle paper in order to "save trees" when our own government stands by and lets six billion of them die and go up in flames on our public lands and no one seems to know about it -- or care.
I'm not suggesting that the Feds could have prevented all of the acres from being infested. It was too big a job, and pine beetles are voracious. But let's do a thought experiment.
Imagine if those 10,000 square miles of mountains and timber were owned and managed not by nine-to-five bureaucrats with nothing personal at stake but by many private landowners or companies. Let's say the owners were capitalists who managed their property for the long-term in order to make a reasonable profit from lumber, recreation, hunting, fishing, mining, energy extraction, and tourism. The incentive to "save" the forests would result in a return on a capital investment and would benefit the stockholders who had risked their investment in the landholdings. Do you think those owners and managers would sit by idly for twenty years and let pine beetles slowly overtake every inch of their property while doing nothing until it all burned down in an uncontrollable inferno?
This is what I think about, as the blood-red sun sets on the western horizon -- which happens to be owned by the federal government as well.
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May '12
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
Outside of national defense is there anything the federal government gets its hands into that doesn't go to chaff?
Jul '11
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
The entire Tahoe basin is going to burn one day soon as well. Private owners go to jail or pay massive fines for cutting down trees on their own property, including unhealthy trees. The Forest Service and TRPA (Tahoe regional planning agency) are drunk on Sierra Club Kool-Aid and no one has the power or guts to give them a breathalyzer.
Mar '12
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
Indeed. This is a heartbreaking story, CJ. Thank you for helping to give it the attention it deserves.
Oct '10
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
This delusional Green agenda has been going on for decades. If the Green Lobby went up in smoke as quickly as these trees, perhaps true conservation can begin.
Then again, the Liberal Green folks will never admit to any failures.
Jul '10
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
"Six. Billion. Trees. Together with lives lost, people's property gone, resources destroyed. I'm too angry right now. Will have to post later when I've cooled down.
May '11
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
CJ, I spent 5 summers fighting fires with the BLM in Central Montana. I was always amazed by two things. 1) Controlled burns, and 2) thinning projects.
Controlled burns are necessary because fire is nature's way of, well, preventing larger fires. Russ Roberts recently had a very interesting EconTalk where one of his guests made this point in regards to bailouts. Putting out every fire (just as bailing out every mistake) isn't always helpful. Sometimes you allow smaller fires in order to avoid massive ones. The BLM understands this, so they spend all summer putting out fires, and much of the fall/winter starting new ones. It is better to have some control over them, of course. But amazingly, many fires could be avoided by things like the timber industry. Which is where you run into #2 above; thinning projects. We used to spend a great deal of time cutting down trees to thin out the forests. Government workers, mind you. Regulations kept private industry from doing this. And we didn't sell the trees, we burned them.
Regulation, overprotection, bureaucracy ... they may literally burn us all.
(and yes, seeing the pine beetle in Western Montana is heartbreaking)
Edited on August 23, 2012 at 7:28amNov '11
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
Shouldn't vast portions of the federal lands be privatized?
Sell it off.
Or better yet, here's a novel idea to make things fair to rich as well as poor:
Hold a National Land Lottery.
Every citizen's name would go in the hopper for a chance to win a nice chunk of Western Paradise. The numerous parcels put up for lottery would each be cut in the shapes and sizes that would seem reasonable for their good use. Some would be homestead-sized, some would be estate-sized, some would be resort-sized, some would be park-sized, and some would be commercial size. But once the various pieces were parcelled out by lot, the lucky winners could then keep the land for their own use and enjoyment, or develop it, or sell it, or do with it whatever would be within reason for a fee simple landowner to do with his own land. The important thing is to get the federal land out of idle, negligent, or obnoxious government hands, and turn it into private property so that it will be more properly cared for and used.
May '11
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
Although... in regards to your picture. I did helitack crew for a few of those summers, and there are few things more beautiful and amazing than a forest fire, especially from that vantage point. Devastating, yes, but amazing.
Jun '12
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
I watched the bark beetle infestation decimate swaths of the Prescott National Forest in Arizona in 2001-2002, and, your analysis is correct: where ecocrats see "protected" wilderness, landowners and firefighters see thousands of acres of fuel waiting for a stray spark to ignite. It's only a matter of time...
May '10
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
Good metaphor for what's happening to the economy.
Aug '12
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
Mr. Box:
Your posts here on Ricochet and several of your books help illustrate how the EPA has gone overboard and could be considered criminal, or at the very least working against the public interest. They answer to nobody, have the full backing of the MSM and are aided/abetted by powerful lobbying groups.
I don't know how this group can be broken, but like banks too big to fail there has to be a "cutting of the knees". Who do they serve?
Aug '12
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
Also, does anybody else recall if large-scale fires were a problem back in the last big drought Dust Bowl years? I have not read much about it, but I don't recall fires being an issue back then, just the wall of dust sweeping the nation all the way to the East Coast.
Jan '12
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
The Thirties were not the last big drought that we've had. That would be 1988. The West burned up that year as well.
As far as large scale fires go, 2006 was also really bad in Montana.
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
Spud O'Chez: Mr. Box:
Your posts here on Ricochet and several of your books help illustrate how the EPA has gone overboard and could be considered criminal, or at the very least working against the public interest. They answer to nobody, have the full backing of the MSM and are aided/abetted by powerful lobbying groups.
I don't know how this group can be broken, but like banks too big to fail there has to be a "cutting of the knees". Who do they serve? · 1 hour ago
Thanks for the kind words regarding my books and my posts. Just to be clear -- and it pains me to write this -- the EPA isn't the main problem in this case. Not that they wouldn't be if given the chance...
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
Astonishing: Shouldn't vast portions of the federal lands be privatized?
Sell it off.
Or better yet, here's a novel idea to make things fair to rich as well as poor:
Hold a National Land Lottery.
...The important thing is to get the federal land out of idle, negligent, or obnoxious government hands, and turn it into private property so that it will be more properly cared for and used. · 8 hours ago
I would love to see a legitimate study on how much revenue could be raised to help pay off the deficit if public lands were sold to private interests -- or to the states themselves. Has anyone seen a study like that?
And why isn't anyone talking about this as a deficit reduction scheme?
Aug '10
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
I was in the Black Hills of South Dakota in July of 2011 and July of 2012 and I was amazed at the number of trees killed by Pine Beetles in just the past year. It was very sad to see all of the rust colored trees mar the beautiful greenery of those magnificient mountains.
I think it's a real scandle that the federal government owns so much of the West since we all know what a poor job they do of managing things. They should sell the lands to private interests or at least release them to the states.
But of course it's much easier for them to blame global warming for the fires instead of admitting to their own mismanangement...
Jul '11
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
CJ, your post this morning has made me unbearably sad. My father's people hail from Basin up in Big Horn and Jackson Hole out in Teton.
I like to think that Wyoming is in my heart. My aunt has been trying to warn people for going on 10 years now that this was coming. I have seen her photos of the 'National Forests' outside her current home near Casper. The transition is so jarring as to be nearly unbelievable. If I can find them, I'll scan and post a few this weekend.
I don't know about anyone else here, but for me, this is why I fight. This Republic was entrusted with one of the greatest treasures on Earth and our bureaucrats are literally killing it. Big government is like a forest, it needs to be culled, manicured and burned once in a while to keep it healthy. 2010 was a burn year, hopefully 2012 is too.
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
J.Voss
I don't know about anyone else here, but for me, this is why I fight. This Republic was entrusted with one of the greatest treasures on Earth and our bureaucrats are literally killing it. Big government is like a forest, it needs to be culled, manicured and burned once in a while to keep it healthy. 2010 was a burn year, hopefully 2012 is too. · 11 minutes ago
Brilliant.
Edited on August 23, 2012 at 5:23pmAug '12
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
You're right, CJ, it's the Forestry Service in this instance, though the EPA gets my blood boiling.
These are the same people who want to manage your health care. Gives you a real peaceful easy feeling, don't it?
May '12
Re: Under A Blood Red Sun, The West is Burning
Most fires are on BLM or Forest Service lands. Perhaps those lands should be put in state hands where there is a more vested interest. The states could sell them and increase their property tax base.
My question is: Where is all the lefts concern about CO2 being put in the air from these fires? Are they calculating how many cars they equal?